BOISE, Idaho — Republican lawmakers in a handful of states are opening another front in the war against President Obama’s health care overhaul, seizing on the hot-button issue of birth control with bills that would allow insurance companies to ignore new federal rules requiring them to cover contraception.
Measures introduced recently in Idaho, Missouri and Arizona would go beyond religious nonprofits and expand exemptions to secular insurers or businesses that object to covering contraception, abortion and sterilization.
“In its present state, the health care bill is an affront to my religious freedoms,” said Idaho Republican Rep. Carlos Bilbao, who is sponsoring the bill.
The ACLU counters, saying such bills discriminate against women.
“Each time more entities are allowed to deny contraceptive coverage, the religious beliefs of some are imposed on others, and gender equality is undermined,” said Monica Hopkins, the ACLU’s Idaho director.
The bills echo a separate proposal in Congress sponsored by Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, allowing insurance plans to opt out of the requirement on contraception coverage if they have moral objections.
The measures are a direct challenge to a recent Obama administration decision that seeks to guarantee employees of religion-affiliated institutions reproductive health coverage, which includes contraception.
The controversy erupted nationally this year when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other religious groups protested a new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act rule that required church-affiliated universities, hospitals and nonprofits to include birth control without co-pays or premiums in their insurance plans.
Their opposition led Obama to modify the rule with changes that shift the burden from religious organizations to insurance companies, a solution that did little to satisfy the opposition and led to the statehouse challenges.
The bills, proposed by Republican lawmakers in conservative states, stand fair chances of passing.
As the issue shifts battlefields from Washington D.C. to state capitols, it offers conservative lawmakers an opportunity to make it more difficult to obtain contraceptives they oppose on moral grounds.
Also, it provides another opportunity for opponents of “Obamacare” to renew the fight they see as a test of states’ rights.
Idaho was the first state to pass a law requiring its attorney general to sue over the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And Missouri and Arizona joined the 27-state constitutional challenge that’s pending in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Americans “confront unprecedented government threats to their religious freedom, in particular from the federal government’s newly enacted mandates relating to health insurance,” said Gary McCaleb, a lawyer from the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based Christian nonprofit.
Planned Parenthood opposes the measures, arguing that they seek to meddle in essential women’s health care that’s helped reduce infant and maternal mortality.
“We’re going to work to make sure women have access to this benefit no matter where they work,” said Rachel Sussman, a Planned Parenthood senior policy analyst. “Only a few states are moving forward with this, and we think they’re going to soon find out it’s bad politics … and it’s bad health care.”
Sussman said it’s too early to say whether her group would file a legal challenge to these measures, should they pass, because they conflict with a federal law.
Ron Johnson, executive director of Catholic Charities Conference in Arizona, said at a hearing recently that passing the state law would give Arizona standing to sue the federal government over the regulation.
But constitutional scholar David Gray Adler, who directs the University of Idaho’s McClure Center for Public Policy Research, says that should the measures pass, states will likely struggle to assert their laws over the federal rule.
“If the federal program provides that women can have access to contraceptives through insurance programs, states will be required to uphold the federal law. That’s the implication of the supremacy clause — federal laws trump state laws.”
AP Writer Michelle Price in Phoenix contributed to this report.
The GOP digs a deeper hole.
What fools they are.
Keep it up!
yessah
The R’s are so hell bent on defeating Obama all common sense has gone out the window. They are something else, just look at the voting in Maine and the counting, or lack there of, who in gods name want this bunch running anything.
Insurance companies don’t mind covering birth control. It’s cheaper than covering pregnancies. Obama is polling 52-38 right now with women since this whole anti-contraception business began. I’m starting to relax and enjoy the stupid. These idiots evidently never heard of a circular firing squad.
Not one woman, anywhere in the country, is compelled to work for the Catholic Church or any of its “good works” activities.
Even for women who choose to work for the Church or related activities, not one woman is being denied access to contraceptive products and services nor is any woman required to forswear the use of contraceptive products or service as a condition of employment.
The Church’s position on this matter applies equally to men using condoms or participating in the use of gels or spermicides or in withdrawal.
This is not a women’s health issue, no matter how much Leftists want to keep the focus there. This is, purely, an attack on the Catholic Church.
If Obama and his acolytes believe strongly enough in this mandate, then they ought to use taxpayer funds to establish an office within the HHS that provides this to all women. They should quit trying to compel private entities to acquiesce to and pay for their politics. What they are doing now is unconstitutional.
You conservatives crack me up. Always for the free market, but, now, you’re trying to forbid the free market, i.e., insurance companies, to decide if they want to offer contraceptives. And I’ll bet my last nickel that if a department in the HHS was created to provide contraceptive services for women, right wingers would scream that they don’t want their taxes paying for it.
You Leftists crack me up. How can anyone possibly confuse a government mandate with a free market?
And, thanks for proving my point. If left wingers can’t find the support for taxpayer funding for this, they should not be deflecting attention from the fact that this is a back-door tax on businesses.
Also, please, don’t mistake the point of my opposition. Free contraceptives for women is a worthwhile and cost-effective goal. It is just that, first of all, nothing is ever “free”, so let’s call it taxpayer paid. And, secondly, the first amendment to our Constitution very clearly prohibits the government from making any law that prohibits the free exercise of religion.
This is not a women’s rights issue. It is an issue of an unbridled and unconstitutional attack on one of the most fundamental, religious, non-gender-specific tenets of the Catholic Church.
Wrong. This is a woman’s right’s issue. Republicans are now trying to get insurance companies to stop paying for ALL contraception, not just ones in religiously affiliated organizations. As to taxpayers not wanting to fund contraceptives: are you on a deserted island? 2/3 of the population want “free” contraception coverage. True, it’s taxpayer funded, just like Medicare, our highways, our 911 system for EMS, police, fire-firefighters, etc., but it’s cheaper than the alternative, which is having poor people that can’t afford more children having them and straining the social service network. But, then, conservatives never have been able to look at the big picture.
I would truly like to see your citation for “Republicans are now trying to get insurance companies to stop paying for ALL contraception,…” I think that is just another Leftist lie.
It is also a lie that this is a woman’s rights issue. Tell us just how you are currently being prevented from using contraceptives and who is preventing you.
As for the rest of your comment, perhaps you missed my acknowledgment of this being a worthwhile and cost-effective goal.
If you are so certain of support and passage, write to Obama, our Senators and Representatives and suggest this be folded into the Medicare program. That would end the controversy, allow the Left to cover it for “free” and leave the Catholic Church alone.
To help you understand this, I will use a popular Leftist argument deployed on other subjects: Don’t like abortion, don’t have one. Don’t like gay marriage, don’t have one. Don’t like working where contraceptive products and services are not offered, don’t go to work there.
Like I said, have you been on some deserted island lately? Haven’t you been paying attention to what Republican senators have been doing on the Hill? Senator Blunt and Senator McConnell are currently holding hearings to prevent ALL contraceptives from being covered by insurance companies, not just by religious institutions. Furthermore, I don’t know if you realize this, but currently, most religiously affiliated institutions ALREADY offer contraceptives to their employees. As an RN working at the Christus hospitals, our employees have coverage for contraceptives. De Paul University has coverage for them as do many Catholic universities. This is due to a lawsuit filed under Title VII by the EEOC in 2000 in which female employees claimed discrimination because male employees were offered Viagra in their insurances while females were not allowed contraceptives. The argument went that Viagra was to treat a medical illness and pregnancy wasn’t an illness. Doctors countered that pregnancies and male erectile dysfuction were both medical conditions and that pregnancy was treated by medical care that could involve health-risk or life-threatening complications (ectopic, diabetes, pulmonary emboli, placenta previa, C-Section, etc.). Employers, except for churches themselves, were required to comply, and this is the case today. This is a tempest in a teapot by religious extremists and is already causing a stir within the laity of the Catholic Church. 98% of Catholic women have taken contraceptives at some point in their lives. Do you agree with the Church’s support of Unions, it’s new stance on anthropological global warming and it’s anti-war beliefs, including the Vatican’s sending of envoys to convince Bush not to invade Iraq? The Church is in touch with many liberal beliefs, but it’s view of women is so in the Medieval ages, that it’s going to cause them a heap of problems. They’ve been hemorrhaging members for decades. Considering that 71% of their members believe in Obama’s current plan, their present anti-woman stance is mind-boggling. It’s their new Galileo.
There is quite a gap in reality between your claim that they are trying to “prevent ALL contraceptives from being covered by insurance companies, not just by religious institutions.” and the intent of an amendment offered by Blunt that reads: ““ensure that health care stakeholders retain the right to provide, purchase, or enroll in health coverage that is consistent with their religious beliefs and moral convictions.”
You might also re-read the article above, especially the paragraph that states: “The bills echo a separate proposal in Congress sponsored by Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, allowing insurance plans to opt out of the requirement on contraception coverage if they have moral objections.”
In which universe is “prevent” equivalent to upholding a Constitutional right to hold religious and moral convictions without government interference?
I appreciate your argument that 98% of Catholic women have used contraceptives. That is their choice. It also proves the Catholic Church really does not prevent any woman’s access to products, procedures and products the Church preaches against as being immoral.
As I asked you before, Tell us just how you are currently being prevented from using contraceptives and who is preventing you.
This is not a women’s rights issue.
Those who believe this is about dems vs rep are being played. This is an issue of the Government against the people. WAKE UP!
Nonsense. Health insurance represents the employees’ money. Any contribution which an employer makes to health care is considered to be part of their employees’ benefit packages. So the Church is dictating to its employees how their own money should be spent.Why should employees at Catholic hospitals – some of whom are Catholic and some of whom are not – have their medical coverage limited because contraception violates Catholic dogma? Nobody is forcing Catholics to use contraceptives – what right do they have to place obstacles in front of others who choose to do so?It is analogous to pharmacists who will not fulfill birth control prescriptions because of their personal beliefs. If you want to be a pharmacist, you waive your right to pick and choose which medical products your customers want to use.
….
It is amazing how the libbers and women’s
rights want contraceptives, obamacare and the govt
to control what they do. These same people though
scream when a state wants to have a test given before
an abortion. Then they scream how dare the govt want us
to do that. What a bunch of hypocrites. These useful idiots
only want govt mandates when it someone else is paying
for it. Pay for it yourself! The free diaper bill is coming next.
The 53% paying taxes will soon be buying diapers for the
libber freeloaders.
are you a plant ?
If the Catholic Church does not wish to abide federal mandates to provide birth control to their employees, then they should be equally willing to forgo all federal assistance (including their tax-free status). Additionally they should be willing to supply (preferably free of charge) complete child-care to all their employees until said children reach their majority (this would include medical care). This would be regardless of parental marital status.
Just a thought.
a very good thought !